


Summertime Sadness

by GenimStilinski



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Darkness from the Nematon, Depression, Dreams, Hallucinations, M/M, Seriously Depression Trigger Warning, Suicide Idealisation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-08
Updated: 2013-12-08
Packaged: 2018-01-04 00:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1074605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GenimStilinski/pseuds/GenimStilinski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Derek leaves Beacon Hills, he leaves Stiles, who in no way is ready for him to go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summertime Sadness

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics are in italics and are left aligned. Songs: Summertime Sadness and Dark Paradise, both by Lana Del Rey.
> 
> Thoughts and writings are interspersed in the text, also in italics.

            Derek left on a Thursday in the mid-morning heat, taking nothing but what he could carry in his duffel.

…

            Stiles pushed harder on the pedal, ignoring the accelerating hum of the Camaro’s engine. It was white noise behind all the things running through his mind. The California coast had nothing but miles of road for him, no judgment lie ahead.

            The eyebrows so often accompanying them were also unexpected to make an appearance.

            It felt so strange to be the one in the driver’s seat, leaning back into the now warm leather of the seat, uncertain whether or not the hint of cologne in the air was emanating from it, or just a shadow of imagination, a will to be wrapped in all that he was…is.

            He’s never coming back.

            Scott said he thought as much. His father looked sympathetic, but said it was probably for the best. There was nothing for him in Beacon Hills anymore.

            Then what was he? What was Stiles if not enough of a reason to stay?

…

_Dancing in the dark in the pale moonlight_

_I’m feeling alive_

He’s had this dream a million times--   or so it seems. He liked the way that the moon cast shadows into Derek’s cheeks, the contrast making him more frightening than in the light of day. But there was something to be said for this type of fright. From the first instance of this dream, it had been months since he’d actually feared Derek. No, this was excitement--   the illicit thrill that comes with the trembling of his thighs before waking again. This was what it meant to want.

            By the moonlight they would entangle themselves, wolf and boy, the music nothing more than the wind passing through deadened leaves and their bare feet on the cool soil. Skin would meet skin, and they were bare for each other.

            Stiles would, if the alpha would listen, tell Scott that Derek was poetry. Scott would laugh it off like it was another one of his jokes, or overstatements of truth. Somehow Stiles feels like if anyone should be able to understand, it should be Scott.

            But in the hours following the dream that followed him, he never once opened his mouth. Not to Scott. Not to anyone.

            Perhaps once or twice he found himself at Derek’s door, his hands pressed to the cool metal, willing himself just to go in and say it. Perhaps he even felt as if Derek were right there on the other side, his fingers hesitating to press back, to feel the slightly warmer spot where Stiles’ skin had transferred body heat.

            Were this the case, he most certainly would have entered.

            (In actuality, he’d run, never saying anything about the dreams to the one person who would _actually_ understand.)

…

            On a Thursday evening, Stiles found a set of keys sitting on top of his laptop. At first, he thought his dad had gotten him something to replace the totaled Jeep, but then he’d recognized them. Out on the curb, he’d found the Camaro. In its glove box, the title had been signed over to him and placed, along with an insurance card with his name on it. Underneath, there was a note. It read: _I’m Sorry_. Signed: _D_.

…

            Fog as thick as it was on the night he last drove his Jeep surrounded this stretch of highway. As a child, Stiles always thought this was an invitation for Scooby Doo to come and slice a hole in it with his tail, as if it were one continuous, opaque sheet in front of them. His mother would tell him, when the fog hit, or when there was heavy rain, that he’d need to be quiet for a while, as if he’d buttoned his lips together. He’d obediently pretend to button them, and she’d put all her focus into getting them wherever they were going safely. Stiles thought it was a game.

            The Sheriff would hide in blind spots, waiting for reckless drivers in bad weather. Once, he’d pulled over the jeep, thinking there must be something wrong with Stiles if Claudia was driving like that. He intended to escort her to the hospital, were it the case. Instead, he found a 10 year old Stiles at the wheel, his wife passed out beneath him. The kid had unbuckled himself and jumped into the front to keep them from crashing when he realized that something was wrong with mommy.

            He did, in fact, escort her to the hospital, but he wasn’t quite sure it was any better or worse sitting in the back of an ambulance while Stiles went with Deputy Meeks, than driving ahead of the Jeep, like he expected, while thinking of all the ways he wasn’t going to yell at his kid for getting hurt doing something dangerous and stupid for the thousandth time.

            Stiles knew better than to drive in the fog. Bad days always accompanied this kind of weather, and for the longest time, it was only a reminder of the beginning of his mother’s decline. He would have thought now that it would remind him of crashing into a tree.

_Nothing scares me anymore._

Maybe he wouldn’t care if he did it again.  
            He wasn’t going to cry again tonight. He was done crying, or, at least, wanted to be.

…

            Months past, and the town of Beacon Hills disassociated the car from their memories of who they thought the mysterious Derek Hale could possibly have become. Instead, they came to know a different kind of trouble followed, the kind with flailing limbs and flimsy excuses; pretty, fake smiles, and tired eyes they chose to ignore.

            Scott’s worried, Stiles knows, and he’s listening, but he just doesn’t know what to tell him. Scott was his brother, but not his alpha, and in this, he couldn’t even be his confidante. How could Stiles be so selfish as to place all of his darkness into the lap of someone whose own darkness was incompatible? Scott and Allison didn’t really get it. Yeah, they all hallucinated, and vivid dreams followed, but he couldn’t help but feel that the other two had it under control. They functioned, where as he began to change…draw inward.

            Another dream infected him, made him shake uncontrollably, uncomfortably, and there was no one, wolf, human, or otherwise who could make it any better.

            He would see Scott, and Isaac, and Allison, Lydia, Melissa, the Sheriff, and shadows of anyone he’s ever really connected with. He’d see them in the loft, staring out at him with something akin to shock and sadness written across their faces. Disappointment, even. And just like that, the door would move, separating him from them. One by one the metal blocked them from his sight.

            A voice, something he used to be able to recall with clarity, would permeate the air, and with a breath on the back of his neck, and a presence to match, he would hear _‘When the door closes, don’t open it.’_

Derek would back away, and as Stiles turned, finally realizing who was there all along, he’d be gone.

…

            On a Thursday evening, foggy as the days that brought irreparable change with it, Stiles went for a drive along the coast.

…

            There were other dreams--   ones which left Stiles writhing in ecstasy in his sheets, unable to rid his mind of the feel of skin on skin, scruff brushing along the column of his neck and down, his addiction to the night’s hold over him coming to its resolution as he passes back into the waking world.

            Still, there were dreams of immeasurable confusion and pain as counterbalance, but he’d gladly pay any price for any bit of Derek he could cling to, as the day brought with it the hopeless longing.

            Derek wasn’t coming back. It had been months.

…

_Think I’ll miss you forever_

_Like the stars miss the sun in the morning sky_

            He wasn’t sure any more that his memories were accurate, or even real. All he knew was the echoes of lover past.

            That is, if Derek could be called such. Stiles hadn’t ever worked up the courage to tell him. He thought, perhaps, if he’d just opened the door- told Derek about the dreams- that could be enough. Derek would understand.

            He’d imagine that the moment would culminate into a kiss, their lips parting, letting each other in, and they’d be as bare as they were in the light of the moon in his near-nightly reality.

_Late is better than never  
Even if you're gone I'm gonna drive_

            Stiles could swear as the foggy air entered through the windows at the rest stop that he could feel Derek’s lips against his own, vivid as they were when he slept. Derek’s fingers crept into the hair on the back of his head, drawing him in, the song of the leaves and their feet on soil playing through a radio that wasn’t even on. He couldn’t see him, but a howl in the distance fed his need to keep going.

            He pulled out and put his pedal to the floor, never letting up, winding through the empty highway obscured by the fog. He had to go to the wolf. His wolf. His alpha. His lover.

            He called to Stiles, like a siren to a sailor, and though he knew how those stories always ended, he didn’t care. Couldn’t care.

_I know if I go, I'll die happy tonight_

            Stiles had reached the precipice of insanity, no longer certain of what was dream, what was reality, and if the difference even mattered.

            Perhaps it was better to have his dream than to face the truth.

            He’s never coming back, and the thought of it moistened his eyes. He knew it now, the one truth he could rely upon was that he was in love.

_No one compares to you,_

_But there’s no you, except in my dreams tonight_

…

            He was there, standing in the woods, just like the first time Stiles had seen him. And, as if going backward, Stiles became aware he was still in the car, this time, as a passenger. Derek was driving, distraught, flying through the fog towards Beacon Hills. Laura was dead, Stiles knew, and he could feel that Derek knew it, too, and just didn’t want to admit it.

            Stiles placed his own hand on top of Derek’s on the gear shift, giving what comfort he could.

…

            WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP

            Stiles didn’t want to, but Derek was shaking him into awareness. It wasn’t real, and Stiles acted on impulse to veer out of the way of the semi he was headed for and back onto his side of the highway.

            WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP

            He was never coming back.

            WAKE UP

            Stiles turned around at the next exit and stopped for the night at the rest stop. He was in no condition to be driving. Derek would kill him if he died. Actually, he’d bring him back, slam his forehead into the steering wheel, and, in all honesty, probably pull him tightly to himself. He couldn’t bear to loose Stiles.

            _Well, asshole, you left me first._

He opened the glovebox and pulled out the note for the first time in the 3 or so months it had been there. _I’m sorry,_ it read, _D._ He traced the letters with his fingers before flipping it over, noticing something that he hadn’t before. Erased was another note.

            _I love you, Stiles. Forgive me?_

            Stiles shook.

He cried himself into a seemingly dreamless sleep, but that night, he danced with his wolf again. Dream and reality had already become a haze, and it could have has easily been the memory of the dream. It faded to comfort, the leather of the seat beneath his cheek smelling like Derek’s cologne, and the fog persisting into the dawn, shrouding the car from its surroundings.

            Later, when he is more awake, he’ll have to go back. His father will have worried, and he’ll have to face up to that.

            Maybe…

            Maybe Derek will have to come back someday, too.

            Stiles will have worried, and hurt, but then he can tell Derek all about the dream, and Derek will understand.

            Derek loves him, too.  


End file.
